C'est La Vie
by Zane-Ice-Fairy
Summary: The Beldam is visited by some very old powers, who are there to collect their due. The Cat has some thoughts. T cause I'm paranoid.


**Heyheyhey! So, I LOVE Coraline-it is basically my one true obsession on this earth. So, thought I'd throw an oneshot out there. Tell me if ya like it! (;**

It had always been night in the Other World.

The night was when creatures the day pushed away came out, when rats scuttled through the walls and blood-red eyes peered through the shadows of the trees, when good things rested or ran away scared from the creeping shadows that ate away at everything, covering all, turning everywhere into the silent clutches of darkness.

She was one of those creatures.

But now, she was stranded in a blank, endless world of white that never stopped taunting her, never stopped reminding her that her world was gone, collapsed, destroyed, and ripped away from her grasp by the very girl the world was made to lure in-and eventually become part of.

She crouched in her web, her "eyes", if they could even be called eyes anymore-cracked, deformed buttons knotted onto her face by tar-rotted string-darting back and forth across the remains of her once powerful empire. Things were tangled in the metal-like rungs of her web-old, dusty children's toys, the dead, lifeless bugs that had once been her servants-and furniture in the living room-and other somesuch things, forgotten, useless, and broken.

_Like you, _hissed the voices from the recesses of the half-built rooms above her, things that could barely be called rooms for the state they were in.

_Look at you, once-powerful Beldam, _taunted the voices above her, swirling into a cacophony of hissing, mocking laughter. _A broken, frail woman-if you are a woman at all! Metal and cloth and filmy, shaking memories that will disintegrate like autumn leaves in a breeze! Once ruler of a limitless domain! Where is it now, Beldam? Where is __**she**__?_

Pressing herself against the web, _her_ web, her only, measly protection left, she shrieked up at the voices, the shadows paler and thinner than lace that etched themselves against the crumbling, black walls she had used so much of her energy to rebuild.

"No! You come now? I am not dead yet! I still live, I still possess power! You cannot claim me yet!" But she knew their response already, and she scraped at the web behind her, suddenly desperate for it to give, for the seemingly endless white to claim her. It would be so much better…

_Oh Beldam, do not toy with us, _the voices whispered. _Just because one lives and holds shreds of power, means nothing. Not unless they can use it. You cannot. You have failed us, Beldam. This domain has nothing anymore to consume, and it would need much more than __**your **__pitiful soul to retrieve its former glory._

They were coming down, slithering down the walls and clutching at the web with their see-through fingers, and she scraped against the web, gasping for air suddenly, for anything…

_We have power, but so little to use. We must use it wisely, Beldam._

The words, the words they had spoken nearly 200 years ago to her, in the obsidian halls…

_That is why we found you, chose you, showed you the shadows and what lay behind them, to use you as our arm. Gather the children, gather the souls, and feed us, raise us, revive us. You failed. FAILED. Only THREE? THREE! We have eaten nearly four times that with the worst of our creations! We thought you useful. We thought you our champion. But we must have thought wrong, Beldam._

She had not felt fear in so long. She had nearly forgotten it. But it reared its ugly head now, deep within her stomach, and clenched at her, grasping, reaching-she was _nauseous. _How was that even possible?

_Your time has come, Beldam._

They were close now, so close, their opaque fingers reaching out, down, down, down…

_You are nothing anymore. We must start anew again, begin the search, and find new blood. A new champion. Hopefully, they will prove more successful than you._

It was over. Her reign-150 years. She had wished for so much more than this. They had told her, all those years ago, that she was their champion. That above all the others, she had more potential, more gifts, more determination, more darkness in her heart.

_And more pride, Beldam. _they whispered. _We warned you of that, too. But in the end, you heard all the good, and ignored our time-ripened advice. And look, look at what it has cost you._

She pressed herself into her web, begging anything, anyone, for it to give, for her to fall into the taunting whiteness. It would be much better than the plans they had for her. But deep down, she knew that it was over. It had been over the moment the girl had slammed the door. Not even when her hand had almost caught her. She was finished.

And she hated it.

_Beldam…_

They reached down, hissing, whether with laughter or anger she knew not. She suspected they had forgotten the true meaning of laughter-or perhaps they had never known it in the first place.

It occurred to her that she had not truly laughed in a very long time, either.

Well.

No time to work on that. Would she even want to?

Yes. She wanted to redo so many things.

Did she regret joining them? Giving up any good in her, so as to be an agent of the shadows? Did she regret killing those children, serving the shadow creatures?

_**Did she?**_

They were around her now, and were reaching out with their grey, shadow-like fingers, reaching to pull her apart, to pull her world down around her-what was left of it. The pain was coming soon.

She was afraid.

_Afraid. _

She had forgotten fear. She had forgotten everything but pride, and cockiness, and the shadows.

_Goodbye, Edwina. _

She wished for mercy, and knew she would not receive it. She wished for her own mother.

Oh, cruel irony.

And they touched her.

The Cat was not afraid of many things.

Not for the Beldam's reasons, of course, but purely for the fact that he was brave and simply didn't become shaken easily.

He was afraid-deathly afraid, in fact-of _them_.

The screams hadn't lasted long.

In an odd sort of way, he felt almost sorry for her. Almost being the key word. She was a servant for them, and therefore one of them. She had killed three children, and had it not been for Coraline, she would have taken many more.

But still…where she was going, if you didn't feel some sort of sympathy, you were a sociopath.

He had watched, hidden, from a wall, as they crowded her out. When the screams tapered off, he felt the world shudder. After a moment, the creatures grouped closer together, and the world began to disintegrate. The Cat immediately leapt back, turned, and, scampering off to the remains of the kitchen, he poised, looked, and walked forward.

He felt it go. He was, by then, safe in the real world, but he could still feel it. He raised his eyes to the moon in the sky where, for a moment, the shape of a button flashed on its silvery-white surface.

"Well…goodbye, old enemy." He sighed in his dry voice, sitting down upon the garden wall. "I know we will never meet again. May you…well, peace will never reach you, and I highly doubt I would wish it upon you in the first place. So…"

He could not think of a proper goodbye. He felt as if he almost should give one. They had been enemies for 150 years, after all. As he stared at the moon, and thought, he wondered if Coraline would feel the difference in the morning-if she would know, deep in her soul, that the "Other Mother" was gone for good. And then, it hit him. Grinning much like another cat from another story *, he sat up tossed his head.

"C'est la vie, mon ennemi."

He leaped off the wall, prowled across the yard, leaped up the stairs, across the fire escape, up the drainpipe, to Coraline's window. He snuck in through the open pane, and leaped up onto her bed.

He did not look back.

And so the end occurred.

**So, quick author's note:**

**C'est la vie is French for "such is life." I thought that this meant, from the Cat's POV, that because of all she did, this was her life, and her reward, and that she had to live with it.**

**Oh well. Makes a weird kinda sense to me. (;**

***The Cheshire Cat, peeps. REALLY.**

**Review, peeps! Tell me if ya liked it, loved it, hated it, want to destroy it with your private flamethrower-PLEASE!**

**So, thanks for stopping by San Diego! (If you don't get this, watch Anchorman: Legend of Ron Burgundy.)**

**~Zane-Ice-Fairy**


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